[SPEAKER_00]: mixing the slightest bit of impurity with salvation by grace through faith equals damn nation.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's it.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's all we get out of that from the biblical account.
[SPEAKER_00]: What we believe and what we say really, really matters.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, we could say it matters desperately because Paul is very clear
[SPEAKER_00]: that relying upon ourselves, relying upon our works, relying upon anything besides Jesus Christ and what He's done on the cross, equals nothing.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, with that we'll dive into Galatians one, eleven and twelve.
[SPEAKER_00]: For I would have you know, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I need to receive it from man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, so Paul wants the Galatians and everyone else all of us today even to know a few very important things.
[SPEAKER_00]: First, his message is not according to men.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is not calm according to the thoughts, the ways that men think it's not according to anyone else's teachings, it's not according to anything that men put together or man put together even Paul put together.
[SPEAKER_00]: The second thing you want them to know is that he didn't receive it from any human.
[SPEAKER_00]: Newly anything you'd like to learn in life, you're going to go to a classroom, you're going to go to a workshop, you're going to go to someone who knows about that subject topic or skill, and you're going to study with them.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the way that the faith was passed.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Hebrew faith was passed down from generation to generation with different rabbis, teachers, and people caring for and teaching one another what the traditions of the elders were, what the traditions of the people were.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is how information is passed down.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Paul said, this is not how I came across the information in the gospel.
[SPEAKER_00]: and no human taught it to him.
[SPEAKER_00]: No human individually gave him that information.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was the disciple of no man in coming to this information.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was taught by no man.
[SPEAKER_00]: None of these three regular, normal sources of human information being passed down were the part of the process in bringing Paul his gospels.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I want you to note that this is distinct from most, if not all, world religions.
[SPEAKER_00]: Most world religions really wind up being about some human who somehow was able to discern, distill, figure out something spiritual, figure out some sort of spiritual information through some means or another.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then claim that they've figured it out.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let me tell you what I've ascertained, what I've discerned, what I have learned, and that is not what we believe is Christians.
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't believe that Paul was a really, really, really smart guy, although he probably was, and we'll say he definitely was.
[SPEAKER_00]: And therefore he was God's choice because he was really smart.
[SPEAKER_00]: Paul's message, the entire message of the Bible comes directly from the mouth of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And had we not been told we never would have been able to figure it out on our own.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can guarantee you something because Christianity is absolutely one hundred percent day and night distinct from every other faith and religion on the face of this planet.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that to me is undeniable evidence that all the smartest people in the world working as hard as they could around the clock would never figure on or figure out grace.
[SPEAKER_00]: What God has done would never be man's invented religion.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can think of a million different ways that God might want to deal with us.
[SPEAKER_00]: We can think of a million different ways that we can try to make ourselves right with God again.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we would never think we would never dream that God Himself would pay the penalty because we could not.
[SPEAKER_00]: We would never imagine that God would then give that salvation completely freely by His grace.
[SPEAKER_00]: And all we have to do is receive it through faith that would never be man's invention for a lot of reasons that we've already looked at and some more that we'll look at today.
[SPEAKER_00]: The butt introduced here is a strong contrast.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's drawing a firm line.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's saying, I didn't receive this from men.
[SPEAKER_00]: This wasn't the teaching of men, but rather something strictly different.
[SPEAKER_00]: The information of Paul's gospel came directly from the glorified Jesus Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: This isn't like the modern Heretical Tello Evangelists saying they talked to Jesus in the shower.
[SPEAKER_00]: They had an angel under their armpit.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is an actual physical encounter with the glorified Jesus Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't have a whole lot of details about those encounters.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have some.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you can imagine just based on John's reaction in the beginning of Revelation when he sees the glorified Christ falling as before him as a dead man.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that this is an overwhelming experience that's going to leave a distinct impression.
[SPEAKER_00]: However, we do have some more marks in Scripture.
[SPEAKER_00]: Paul repeatedly relates the reality that he is not making this up.
[SPEAKER_00]: uh... second gradients two nine through ten reads but it just it is written things which i is not seen in here is not heard and which have not entered into the heart are entered the heart of man all that god is prepared for those who love him for to us god revealed them through the spirit for the spirit such as all things even the depths of god
[SPEAKER_00]: The gospel, the Bible, is not information that you could have figured out on your own, and that's why it's so vital that we be in it, because the Bible challenges all of our basic understandings of life, and everything that will naturally come down to.
[SPEAKER_00]: If God had not revealed it, we would not know it, matter how smart or intelligent or sharp we think we are.
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, even to understand it, even to apply it to our lives, we rely on the ministry of the Holy Spirit.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's an absolute humility in every step of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: In a passage, maybe very familiar to us.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, first Corinthians, eleven, twenty-three, Paul writes, but I receive from the Lord, that's which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord Jesus in the night, in which He was betrayed, took bread.
[SPEAKER_00]: He goes on to narrate that event.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I want to draw your attention to, is that Paul didn't go to Peter and say, hey, Peter, what that last supper thing we do that?
[SPEAKER_00]: What happened that night?
[SPEAKER_00]: Additionally, Paul didn't go to John and say, hey, John, you are there reclining on the Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: Tell me about that night.
[SPEAKER_00]: He received that information.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus Christ Himself in person delivered this and said, this is important.
[SPEAKER_00]: Paul, you need to understand this.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so he personally narrated him through and took him through whatever the most important parts for Paul to understand and for him to relate to us through the Word.
[SPEAKER_00]: directly from the Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even that most basic historical fact that he could have possibly picked up anywhere, we find that he received directly from the Lord.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Paul had this experience with the resurrected Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think we can say with a great deal of confidence that it changed him.
[SPEAKER_00]: It changed him dramatically, such that he is very serious about the message which he's been given to relate.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to ask this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Are we that serious about the gospel?
[SPEAKER_00]: I gotta be honest, I'm frequently not.
[SPEAKER_00]: frequently I get caught up in the ways and affairs of what's going on in the world or what this is all about or maybe I get caught up in hearing someone else give their own perverted version of the gospel and go well close enough maybe maybe that'll be you know a little Jesus plus a little Jesus and a little Jesus in law I mean at least he's talking about Jesus right
[SPEAKER_00]: No, no, that's not all right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Paul was that serious about this message because he beheld, I believe, beheld the risen Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: Couldn't shake that image from his mind, couldn't power scrub it away and it dominated, I believe his entire context.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when you want to see this man too,
[SPEAKER_00]: You want to see this God man who saves us totally by his love and is grace in the only way is by putting your faith in what he has done.
[SPEAKER_00]: By accepting receiving the gift, otherwise you'll be forever denied that day to day joy, that day to day life and peace.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's what makes Paul serious about this gospel, his gospel.
[SPEAKER_00]: Far more serious than when he talks about other things.
[SPEAKER_00]: The gospel is very simple, and I hope it is simple and easily understood by everyone here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Simple enough to be understood by a child of three or four, and yet deep enough complex enough and important enough to contemplate and pray and consider every day for the rest of your life and very likely for the rest of eternity.
[SPEAKER_00]: Paul relates the gospel in several places, and it's related throughout the Bible in several places.
[SPEAKER_00]: One very nice place is in First Corinthians, fifteen, three, three, five.
[SPEAKER_00]: It says, for I delivered to you as a first importance, that which I also received.
[SPEAKER_00]: One that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that it was buried and it was raised on the third day, according to Scriptures, and that he appeared to seephas
[SPEAKER_00]: then to the twelve.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God took on flesh, died for our sins, paid our penalty, paid our price because we never could.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not because we were lazy and we could have, but he wanted to make it a little bit easier because we were hopelessly separated from him.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the good news.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is great news.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is what Paul is so very passionate and so very serious about.
[SPEAKER_00]: Moving on, Galatians won thirteen through fourteen reads, but you have heard my former manner of life in Judaism, how I used to persecute the Church of God beyond measure and tried to destroy it, and I was advancing in Judaism, beyond many of my contemporaries among my countrymen, being more extremely zealous for my ancestral tradition.
[SPEAKER_00]: Evidence for the claims, Paul has made this massive statement
[SPEAKER_00]: He said that his messages come directly from God, directly from Jesus Christ, personally himself.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a big statement.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't just casually throw off, and this is why I have a huge problem with certain sub-sexive Christianity right now, just casually throw off.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Lord told me, no, he didn't shut up.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is an absolute lie.
[SPEAKER_00]: Paul doesn't lightly throw around the phrase, the Lord told me.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's very serious.
[SPEAKER_00]: It comes with a gravity and a guarantee that if you throw it around lightly, I fear for your soul to say the very least.
[SPEAKER_00]: Paul, on the other hand, knows that when making an incredibly huge claim, audacious claim like this, that it has to be backed up.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Paul offers his own life story as support for the case that this message came to him truly through divine means or means of divine revelation.
[SPEAKER_00]: First he tells them that they've already heard part of what's going on.
[SPEAKER_00]: Paul's conversion, Paul's change over from Judaism to Christianity, we might say, was a huge deal.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a headline topper amongst the, amongst the, especially in Palestine, but certainly, possibly is going as far as Jewish communities elsewhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: Even so far as to note that non-Christian historians
[SPEAKER_00]: very frequently, notate that Gameleos, Disciple, or Fallen Disciple, Paul, caused him much trouble and so on and so forth.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the reality is that this is externally recorded outside of history.
[SPEAKER_00]: Paul's conversion was a big deal.
[SPEAKER_00]: First of all, Paul was a passionate persecutor of the church.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hopefully, this information is familiar to this.
[SPEAKER_00]: He tells us it was beyond measure.
[SPEAKER_00]: The word used here is Hupa Balo.
[SPEAKER_00]: Balo is where we get our English word, Balo is the Greek word from which we took our English word, means to throw.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hupa means super or over.
[SPEAKER_00]: So to overthrow completely, the idea of one word picture I've heard is if I asked you to throw me the ball and you threw it all the way down to my Ohio stadium.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the idea of the beyond measure, the absolute extremity to which Paul was willing to go to persecute and destroy the church.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have several passages, and thankfully, the book of Acts works as a perfect dovetail that a life and story of Paul, and we're going to find that that's very important in our own understanding and growth.
[SPEAKER_00]: Saul, who became known as Paul in his ministry to the Gentiles,
[SPEAKER_00]: began ravaging the church, entering house after house and dragging off men and women, he would put them in prison.
[SPEAKER_00]: Acts eight, three.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just want you to spend a minute here and think about the type of person who wants to do this.
[SPEAKER_00]: The type of person who wants to hear that there's a Christian gathering, a Christian meeting is a Bible study down the road.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to get my friends.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to show up.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to kick in their door.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to grab the women and the children and everyone else and we're going to drag them screaming and crying in the prison.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's soul.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the heart of Paul.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's who Paul is.
[SPEAKER_00]: Acts nine, one in two says, now Saul still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord went to the high priest and asked him for letters from him to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the way, both men and women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.
[SPEAKER_00]: Saul, who's characterized as breathing, threats, and murder.
[SPEAKER_00]: Have you seen these people?
[SPEAKER_00]: Not necessarily about maybe religious issues, although oftentimes so that every word is tainted with an overwhelming spirit of hatred and anger.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just a deeply, painfully, hateful person, angry person.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he goes to the high priest, he says, I want permission to go and find Christians elsewhere and wreak havoc in their houses and drag them and bind them and make them walk behind me, all the way back down to Jerusalem so we can punish them appropriately for putting their faith in this Jesus guy, for trusting that Jesus was the Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: Finally, Paul speaking in his own defense, because those were by Dr. Luke.
[SPEAKER_00]: Acts, twenty two, four and five.
[SPEAKER_00]: He says, I persecuted this way, which is the way in which early Christians referred to Christianity or the faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: I persecuted this way to the death, binding and putting both men and women into prison as also the high priests and all the counsel of the elders can testify from them.
[SPEAKER_00]: I also received letters to the brethren and started off for Damascus in order to bring even those who were there to Jerusalem as prisoners to be punished.
[SPEAKER_00]: The idea?
[SPEAKER_00]: This guy was willing to give up everything, to destroy anyone who knew Jesus Christ, who trusted in Jesus Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: He wanted to see every single one.
[SPEAKER_00]: We might say that Paul's attitude that the only good Christian was a dead Christian.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he was very well rewarded and very well known and very well looked upon or thought upon by the community there, by much of the community there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Paul was persecuting with a purpose, and that purpose was pious passion.
[SPEAKER_00]: Enough teasing that statement for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Paul's purpose was his piety.
[SPEAKER_00]: Paul's purpose was the fact that he saw something encroaching on what he thought was the most important thing in the world, and he believed very strongly that that was worth finding and killing people over to at least scare the others out of the way.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was a Pharisee.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Pharisees were a very special group in the New Testament world.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are a group of people who aspired to live the most holy, sanctified life that they could, even to the point of making up new rules and laws and new systems and traditions to keep them more separated from all the other hidden Gentiles than they already were.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he excelled in this group of Pharisees.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they all got together, everybody knew Paul, and thought, man, he's it.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's a student of Gamelio, which would kind of be like saying that he went to Harvard or Yale.
[SPEAKER_00]: The Institute of Gamelio was a big old deal.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a huge punch on your resume to be able to say you studied with him.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was moving up quickly.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was like a little Jewish religious yuppie.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was flying up the ranks.
[SPEAKER_00]: He tells us even surpassing some of the people or many of the people of his age.
[SPEAKER_00]: Paul was a leader of this law.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why would he include this information?
[SPEAKER_00]: He could part.
[SPEAKER_00]: Paul was a leader of this law.
[SPEAKER_00]: These people who were coming around and trying to submit these young Christians to the law have them circumcised and have them obey the law of Moses and keep the dates and keep the calendar and all these things, they were just lackeys.
[SPEAKER_00]: Paul's point, just you know, Galatians, all those people who lied to you, they're just lackeys.
[SPEAKER_00]: I ran the groups that they learned this garbage in.
[SPEAKER_00]: Paul saying he outclassed them and outrank them ten times over Paul knows the depths of legalism.
[SPEAKER_00]: Paul knows and was better at it and was better known for it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so why are you listening to these backwards lackeys who don't even know what they're talking about in the context of Judaism?
[SPEAKER_00]: Paul then reveals the object of his passion and also those who are troubling the Galatians.
[SPEAKER_00]: Tradition.
[SPEAKER_00]: Once you denote, he's not passionate about God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And by the way, that's my favorite musical, so there's not a dig.
[SPEAKER_00]: Paul wants them to know that the very object of his passion was not, the Lord was not God's glory, grace or salvation.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was the traditions of his people.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was not zealous for God, but zealous for the cultural traditions of his people.
[SPEAKER_00]: We actually had a great introduction to many of those this morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everything from how am I going to wash cups and wash my hands according to the tradition, not from the Bible, the tradition of the elders.
[SPEAKER_00]: When can we eat and how, according to the traditions of the elders, when and how far can I go on the Sabbath day, and all of these other traditions that had been added, tradition after tradition, there was enough to keep you busy for your entire life, just learning, learning and applying, new cultural traditions that the Hebrew people had added or just come about on their own.
[SPEAKER_00]: what Paul was excited about.
[SPEAKER_00]: And of course this never happens today.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh sure, we're not interested in the tradition of maybe the Sabbath or ceremonial handwashing or some of these other things.
[SPEAKER_00]: But do we have traditions?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we kind of do.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't want to say that those traditions are all necessarily a bad thing in and of themselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: A tradition can be fine.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have observed a lot of them this morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: Every Sunday you come to church.
[SPEAKER_00]: What do we do?
[SPEAKER_00]: We have someone come in and open us with prayer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then we sing a couple of songs.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then we have a scripture reading.
[SPEAKER_00]: Then you have a sermon.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a tradition, isn't it?
[SPEAKER_00]: So what's the difference?
[SPEAKER_00]: One, hopefully we are evaluating our tradition first and foremost, in light of the Word of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And saying, is this actually what the Word of God tells us?
[SPEAKER_00]: Do our traditions point us towards Jesus or point us towards away from Jesus at for lack of a better phrase?
[SPEAKER_00]: Additionally, we want to ask the question, are we making our traditions the main event?
[SPEAKER_00]: This is going to sound heretical.
[SPEAKER_00]: This might even scare you.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have a tradition about baptism that's really important to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can it?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's garbage.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can it?
[SPEAKER_00]: You have a tradition about some sort of thing that you think should happen in the service or it's happened when believers get together.
[SPEAKER_00]: Can it?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not once again.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a great thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: We just celebrated a wonderful baptism last week.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a wonderful celebration of what Jesus Christ didn't him.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if we think for one second that that tradition saved him or that tradition over another one was more valuable than we've totally and completely missed the point.
[SPEAKER_00]: What are the traditions do we have today?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, personally, we might hold that, well, you know, men should have their haircut in this way, women haircut in that way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Traditions about what things we can consume and win.
[SPEAKER_00]: Traditions about what kind of music is appropriate or, as we mentioned in our morning service, what kind of instruments might be appropriate and sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's fine to have some of those ideas, but don't ever think that your thoughts and my ideas and my perceptions are gods.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because then I'm just making up the rules and claiming to be God, worshiping myself as God.
[SPEAKER_00]: And even worse, if you don't do what I say, if you don't agree with my traditions, well then you're not just going against me, friend.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're going against God.
[SPEAKER_00]: See, that's a problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a huge problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is one of the problems that plagues and rifts the church throughout America throughout the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the fact that we are more passionate for our silly traditions than we are for Jesus Christ, His gospel, His Word and the love that He gives us.
[SPEAKER_00]: I get information daily about how we need to change the traditions of the church to involve these groups, small groups, this service, that project, this time if you're not doing our tradition, our thing, you're not quite living up.
[SPEAKER_00]: Either as a church body or as individuals, we need to realize that those traditions of men are meaningless in light of the Word of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'll leave that there because I could saw it for far too long.
[SPEAKER_00]: I may have already.
[SPEAKER_00]: But my question, the next question is, why would Paul give up power, popularity, and comfort that he had?
[SPEAKER_00]: There's fun and power, isn't there?
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe it doesn't appeal to all of us.
[SPEAKER_00]: But there's a certain reality that to any of us, the idea of being able to walk in and be the authority of the final authority in any situation might be attractive.
[SPEAKER_00]: It certainly was to Paul.
[SPEAKER_00]: We could walk into some kick the door down in someone's house and take them screaming from their homes, using the position of being the Christian hunter, if you like.
[SPEAKER_00]: Further Mori had popularity, people looked up to him and thought, how great, how wonderful, how fantastic, show, how fantastic Paul is.
[SPEAKER_00]: And also, there was undoubtedly a great deal of comfort.
[SPEAKER_00]: for him in this lifestyle.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why would he give all of that up?
[SPEAKER_00]: He was a rock star.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was amazing.
[SPEAKER_00]: He was looked up to admire loved care for very likely even doing well financially and in and through all of this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why would he give this up?
[SPEAKER_00]: The only logical explanation, and this is what Paul is saying, is that Jesus Christ stepped into His existence and changed everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know about you if I were in Paul's position.
[SPEAKER_00]: It would have been very difficult, even having been confronted by the risen Christ not to just choose to delude myself.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I must have ate some bad gefilter fish or something because boy, that was a weird day.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a weird three days and you know what, I'm going right back to where I was because that was comfortable.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was looked up to an admired and Paul never did.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why would Paul give this up?
[SPEAKER_00]: The only explanation is that he actually had the encounters that he said that he had.
[SPEAKER_00]: But when God who'd set me apart, even from my mother's womb, and called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his son and me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles.
[SPEAKER_00]: I did not immediately consult with flesh and blood, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me, but I went away to Arabia and returned once more to Damascus.
[SPEAKER_00]: Paul makes a lot of these wonderful characteristic but God's statements.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love it.
[SPEAKER_00]: He described Ephesians chapter two, one through tenic has one of these fantastic ones that this is the way things are.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's hopeless.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's terrible.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're in absolutely the worst case possible.
[SPEAKER_00]: But God, and then he goes on.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is one of my, this is another one of my favorite Pauline, but God statements.
[SPEAKER_00]: Paul's thing, this is the way it was.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was breathing death threats.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was hateful.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was angry.
[SPEAKER_00]: Other places he says, I was a blasphemer, there's guilty of hubris.
[SPEAKER_00]: and God stepped in and enacted the change.
[SPEAKER_00]: God stepped in and interfered with Paul's existence.
[SPEAKER_00]: He tells them that God had set him apart, you might even have the word sanctified in your Bible, set which just means set apart, set Paul apart all the way from the womb.
[SPEAKER_00]: That God knew
[SPEAKER_00]: because God is only knowing exactly what would happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it designated Paul to this purpose ever since he was a few cells resting in the womb of his mother.
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll forgo the obvious point of what that tells us about the sanctity of life and when it begins for the moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: This brushes up against the issue of election, or you might even have predestination stuck in your mind.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to dwell on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not going to be worth a ton of our time in terms of our practical understanding of this passage or elsewhere.
[SPEAKER_00]: But, throughout Scripture, we have several different kinds of election.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've resources on this if it's a point of interest to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have corporate election.
[SPEAKER_00]: We see the corporate election in terms of Israel.
[SPEAKER_00]: God's sovereignly chose Israel, and anyone who was born in Israel was part of the chosen people.
[SPEAKER_00]: Additionally, you and I have a corporate election, and most of the time in Scripture, when it says, you were chosen, you were elected, or anything like this, and will oftentimes follow with the important phrase in Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are chosen, and so far as you are positioned in the chosen one.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's corporate election.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyone in Christ is chosen.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we have other election here, and this is the election we're talking about now.
[SPEAKER_00]: Paul is not really talking about so much his election to salvation or his movement salvation.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's talking about his election to a specific service.
[SPEAKER_00]: God knew from the womb how Paul would react and what gifts the gifts of a apostleship of miracles and like the like that Paul, he was going to give to Paul.
[SPEAKER_00]: God had already chosen Paul to this election to service.
[SPEAKER_00]: And, oh, by the way, you have been elected to service as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have been given specific and important spiritual gifts that we need you to be exercising within the context of our body, or within the context of your body wherever you're at.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have been elected to service wherever it is that you work to be a light
[SPEAKER_00]: for Jesus Christ and a symbol and a beacon of His love and His hope to the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have been chosen to serve us in your world too.
[SPEAKER_00]: With every bit, the same amount of God's sovereignty, foresight and planning as was Paul.
[SPEAKER_00]: I get the flashy gifts, but you have every bit as much an election to that call at duty.
[SPEAKER_00]: That service, I should say.
[SPEAKER_00]: Next, many of us are chosen for a time or a situation
[SPEAKER_00]: We might be tempted to look anywhere else in the world and any other time period in the world and maybe envy them.
[SPEAKER_00]: To live in England during the time of Charles Spurgeon, what an exciting thing that would be when you could talk and share the gospel in thousands and thousands of people would show up such that when a simple preacher, Charles Spurgeon dies, the entire city shuts down to celebrate
[SPEAKER_00]: his funeral and his memorial.
[SPEAKER_00]: That'd be a fun time to live in, wouldn't it?
[SPEAKER_00]: And we could attach ourselves to any.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then we can go in the other direction and feel totally spiritually dwarfed by those Christians who were chosen and given a time to live in in which they were murdered, persecuted.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't know when the very worst and we could think with jealousy, those are the real Christians.
[SPEAKER_00]: Man, I've never had to sacrifice and give up like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've never had to look down the barrel of a gun and say you can shoot me, but I will not recant on what I've said for Jesus Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: What I believe in Jesus Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we can say those are the lucky ones.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, guess what?
[SPEAKER_00]: They were chosen and appointed for that time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yours is here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yours is now.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is where your meant to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is where God puts you in place and time to serve, to glorify, to honor, to love, to obey Him.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's where you're at and God does not make accidents.
[SPEAKER_00]: God does not make mistakes.
[SPEAKER_00]: So with that we'll move on from election.
[SPEAKER_00]: God saved Paul in this large miraculous way, though, for a specific purpose.
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, it's that second election to service that Paul is kind of highlighting here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Paul was specifically chosen by God.
[SPEAKER_00]: to be his tool to reach the Gentiles.
[SPEAKER_00]: You see Peter, James, John, they were fantastic, but given their specific history and how God planned, used and created them, they were not going to be the ones to be able to go past and get over the hump if you like.
[SPEAKER_00]: of believing that maybe we have to judyize or make good Jews out of all of these Gentiles in order for them to be saved.
[SPEAKER_00]: Paul was God's special instrument to do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Paul was God's special instrument to go and sit and walk and talk and live with these uncircum-sized dogs, these Gentiles.
[SPEAKER_00]: Paul was God's man for that hour.
[SPEAKER_00]: Rather than check things out with the established leaders, Paul retreated.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is something that I think was likely more common in the ancient world than today.
[SPEAKER_00]: When we got life is always bustling and cruising and moving and chugging on and it's tough to even think about stopping to take a break, but Paul had a lot.
[SPEAKER_00]: to think about.
[SPEAKER_00]: You see, every moment of his life, every ounce of his mental, emotional energy had been geared towards killing these Christians because he was absolutely sure that that was what God needed, wanted, demanded from him or from anyone.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now he just found out that everything that he'd been investing in for all these past years was wrong.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everything from how we woke up in the morning and started his day, to how he conducted it throughout the day, to how he went to bed at night, and every thought that he had between he had a lot to think about.
[SPEAKER_00]: The information that Jesus Christ gave him and it actually continued to give him my belief throughout this time of respite, dramatically and monumentally challenged and upset every bit of his understanding and every choice that he made henceforth.
[SPEAKER_00]: And sadly, when a person becomes a Christian today, it's very frequent that we are able to compartmentalize so effectively that we think, okay, I became a Christian that fits in that box.
[SPEAKER_00]: Saved, I got my hell insurance.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm fine, now I'm gonna go about and continue to live as if nothing else was affected by this one important change of putting our faith in Jesus Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't ask, did you ever take some time to work things out?
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know when you became a believer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you're like mine, your conversion story isn't within memory.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you remember very dramatically, but the reality is, is that if we don't take time to consider how we're either abiding with Christ or rejecting Christ, how we're either trusting in Him or trusting in ourselves, chances are by default, we're going to be trusting in ourselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: Have you been unwilling to bring your work situation to God?
[SPEAKER_00]: Have you been unwilling to bring your relationships before the Lord?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, Jesus, He stands over there and He does the salvation thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's it.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, false.
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely not.
[SPEAKER_00]: Your faith in Christ ought to affect logically every other choice, every other decision, every other thought that passes through your head and how do you think that's going to happen?
[SPEAKER_00]: We need to be taking time, I'd say, even regularly, to work these things out.
[SPEAKER_00]: In Sunday school beforehand, in our church services, in your Bible studies throughout the week, throughout any other, your daily Bible devotions, what we are doing is exactly what Paul said we're meant to be doing in Romans twelve.
[SPEAKER_00]: It will not be in confirmed any longer to this pattern in this world.
[SPEAKER_00]: But rather, we're being transformed by the renewing of our mind.
[SPEAKER_00]: How does that happen?
[SPEAKER_00]: By taking the information that we've received and put together and established from the world, from our flesh, from the enemy, and dumping it, and refilling, reworking our aspect in terms of the living, breathing word of God, and then Paul goes on to say, once we've done that, you will be able to test and approve what the will has got, not because of some magical Holy Spirit, mumbo jumbo, but because the Spirit enables you to understand the word which enables you to know the mind and heart of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what's revealed there.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's how we can know God's will in our lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: It isn't the Spirit told me, no, no, no.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's I dug into the Word, God's revealed Himself to all of us, and it's both for all of us to share, for all of us to know.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's how you'll be able to test and approve what the will of God is.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what Paul was doing in this time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Paul took a great amount of time to rethink everything.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's the point as we close our study this morning.
[SPEAKER_00]: The gospel is not man's invention.
[SPEAKER_00]: It simply is not.
[SPEAKER_00]: The gospel is not something that we worked out, made up, cooked up, figured out.
[SPEAKER_00]: The gospel is not something that any man added anything to.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no motivation for men to invent salvation by grace through faith.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in fact, most of church history has filled with men and women who long to control other people.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the only way to do it, just like these Judaizers, is to begin to pervert the gospel of grace so that they can on twist you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whether it's trying to hold some sort of reward over you or try to hold some your salvation itself.
[SPEAKER_00]: over you.
[SPEAKER_00]: The reality is is that church history is littered with people who are trying to abuse and pervert the gospel for the express purpose of controlling other people.
[SPEAKER_00]: This first generation of believers died as martyrs for this gospel.
[SPEAKER_00]: The people actually be held Jesus Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: The people who actually saw these miracles that were done by Jesus and by the apostles after Him.
[SPEAKER_00]: The people who actually witnessed the Word of God coming into this human earth, witnessed the birthing of these letters that we now have collected and called the Bible.
[SPEAKER_00]: They died as martyrs deaths, many of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because they believe this message was true and so important.
[SPEAKER_00]: that even fudging on it wasn't worth saving my life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Placing faith in Christ frees us from three important things from sin, the world, and from the devil, from the enemy.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are freed, separated, the Bible used the word dead to, these three powers that were the only powers that were available to submit to when we were walking in the flesh apart from Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's only in Christ that we have the freedom from these things.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if we are not resting in Christ, you can bet one of these three authorities is doing this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Each of these forces are also working nonstop to prevent the gospel.
[SPEAKER_00]: your flesh will constantly, my flesh, all of ours, our sin nature will constantly be trying to come up with a rebuttal.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, if we say that then all of a sudden the sin will all sin or will do this or that means your good works are worth less and that's not okay because I worked really hard for those good works.
[SPEAKER_00]: A perhaps trying to provoke the gospel and saying well if we say this then if we say that the flesh is constantly at work the world is certainly constantly at work.
[SPEAKER_00]: producing anything other whether it's legalistic hateful project whatever it doesn't matter as long as it opposes the gospel of grace in the enemy of course the motivating force we must know the word of God we must know the gospel we must trust have faith in believe we must communicate it to a world that needs it so desperately
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what I hope we get out of this study in Galatians, a former foundation than ever in the gospel of his love, in the gospel of our salvation in him, so that the lives, your families, and your workplaces, and your neighborhoods, and communities will be forever changed by the only message that ever changed anyone in an important way, a truly important way.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's pray.
[SPEAKER_00]: Heavenly Father, we thank you for the gift of this day, this time,
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for your wonderful word.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for your Son, Jesus Christ.
[SPEAKER_00]: By your grace alone, can we be saved?
[SPEAKER_00]: Come to know what it is.
[SPEAKER_00]: to be in a relationship with you.
[SPEAKER_00]: We praise you for these things, pray that our study this morning would find fertile soil in each of our lives.
[SPEAKER_00]: And Lord, if anything, it was said that it was wrong and pray that it would be forgotten and removed so that we might see your son Jesus Christ more clearly.
[SPEAKER_00]: And his name we pray, amen.